Nita Creekmore: Putting Reflection Into Practice

C3 Connecting, Coaches, Cognition

Nita Creekmore is an Instructional Coach who lives just outside Atlanta, GA. In the 19 years, she has been in education, she truly believes that in all aspects of the field, relationships must always come first. She has obtained a Bachelor’s in English, Master’s in Elementary Education, and Educational Specialist in Supervision & Leadership. She currently works for Bright Morning Consulting as a Presenter. Nita is also an Instructional Coach Consultant through her business, Love Teach Bless, LLC.

Nita is married to Michael Creekmore, Jr., and has four children. In her free time, she loves spending time with her family and friends, attending her kids' activities, practicing yoga, and relaxing with a good book.

Episode Notes:

-Coaching is embedded professional development that is transformational. Coaching is supportive, it is being in community with one another, but also learning as a coach alongside the coachee.

-Reflection starts with yourself. The coach needs to self-reflect and build a relationship to build space for vulnerability in order to do deep reflection. The things you ask your coachees to do, you should do every day as well. Use journaling and coaching conversations with yourself to do that reflection work.

-Reflection with educators can be stretched with the conversation with a coach. There needs to be a lot of trust and relationships built to make this successful. What emotions are coming up for you? What did you feel like in the observation? What constitutes joy for you

in teaching?

- The 5 Whys - use these to deepen the reflection.

-If you do not have a coach, you can use your team to reflect. You can even dig into the 5 whys with yourself. Try to elicit the reflection. Offer yourself grace and self-compassion. Try celebratory reflection!

-Closeout conversations, having the space to reflect on their big wins or their goals for moving forward. These are so important to tie up the year and think through the areas that they felt that they were winning and trying to grow more in. Coaches can also do this for themselves on paper in order to reflect for themselves to become even more transformational as a coach.

-Inspired Educators, Inspire Educators

-When you think that you are having a teacher that you cannot reach, always go back to yourself and look at how you are showing up. And also look at how you started that relationship. What could have been done differently? How can it be restored, if needed?

Connect with Nita:

Instagram: LoveTeachBless

https://love-teach-bless.com/